February Update

For those of you who don't know, my father passed away on January 20 of this year after a nearly 6 year battle with cancer. Because of that, I've been occupied with a variety of things which didn't involve updating my blog. However, I now have a moment to include a quick update, so here goes...

While I was in Jackson, Charlotte had a big snow storm that prevented Lauren from leaving the house for a day. Having only had around one snow day per year since we moved to Charlotte, I figured that the snow was over for the year. Boy, was I wrong. Friday night/Saturday morning, we received 4 inches of snow. It happened early enough that Lauren and I were actually able to take a walk around the neighborhood and enjoy how beautiful all the trees around us looked without having to go out late.

Unfortunately for us, we had picked this weekend to rent a stump grinder and do yard work. Fortunately, it warmed up enough throughout the day that it wasn't too unpleasant and we were able to get rid of 16 stumps, most of which had been cut down by us shortly after buying the house. I must admit that I always have an inordinate amount of fun when we rent or purchase power equipment, and this was no exception. The only snag was that the Sunbelt people weren't exactly up to par for a variety of reasons, and we'll never rent from them again. The machine did work, though, and here are some pictures of me using it.

We also were able to bag up the rest of the leaves in our yard. We're trying to figure out whether to till the yard and then seed, get a few loads of topsoil and then seed, or just get someone else to do it altogether. We're hoping we can get our yard in decent condition this year.

Aside from that, everything is going as well as can be expected. My company was incredibly generous about the amount of time they gave me to stay at home with my family after my dad died, and I am so grateful to be working with such amazing people. Lauren's work is going well. They're hiring for a few positions, and Lauren just got a new boss after her previous boss decided not to return from maternity leave, so there are quite a few changes. Connor is Connor, not much to report there.

Hopefully it won't be as long between posts going forward, but we'll see.

Long Awaited Update

I have been terrible about updating the blog over the last several months. Most of that has to do with a lack of home repair and improvement, but we've actually been pretty busy in general with work, etc. The following picture is from one of the few weekends where we actually had some down time and were able to enjoy some nice weather in uptown (downtown) Charlotte. We ate outside at a place called Stool Pigeons.

We also went with the youth group to a corn maze outside of town. When you entered the maze, you were given a sheet with questions based on a theme that you and your group chose (movies, history, etc.) and the answers to those questions told you which way to go when you got to certain points in the maze. It was pretty fun, but some of the answers were a little off. And it was cold. Thus, the hat.The only real work we've done to the house aside from regular upkeep and maintenance was getting new windows. Lauren met someone while getting her hair cut who owned a window manufacturing company and sold them to us for much cheaper than they would normally be. We used their recommended installers and their price was much cheaper than usual as well. They make the house look a LOT nicer and are much more energy efficient. We went to Pensacola because Lauren's friend Christa got married in November. I was able to go over to Biloxi to see my sister and her kids. I got to hang out a lot with my nephew Chris, pictured below.

This last picture was just funny. Lauren's mom gave Connor a toy for Christmas, and as he does with all of his toys, he tore it up. It took him roughly an hour to remove the ears, legs and most of the stuffing from the little stuffed dog. This is why we can't have nice things.

Happy New Year to everyone!

July Update

Lauren and I went to Tallahassee, Florida, for the Fourth of July to visit her sister Mandy and Mandy's boyfriend Rob. We left after Lauren got off work on Wednesday and stayed that night with my cousin Lauren in Atlanta.

We finally got to Tallahassee on Thursday at around 4 after going shopping a little in Atlanta before leaving. It was an interesting drive, the last part of which was on a state highway that seemed very similar to the stretch of Highway 49 in Mississippi between Hattiesburg and the coast.

We ate at a Cuban restaurant on Thursday night, which was delicious, and then drove around Tallahassee, looking at the campuses of Florida State and Florida A&M. Friday, we slept in a little and then went to Wakulla Springs State Park, where we took a boat ride on the Wakulla River. We were hoping we'd get to take a glass-bottom boat ride, but it turned out that the water was too dark in the area, so we just took a regular boat. We did get to a see a pretty wide variety of animal life, including alligators, birds, and even a manatee and her little calf.

After the park, we went to a lighthouse on the coast and saw another alligator there. We went back to Tallahassee and ate at a pizza place called Momo's, which serves pizzas that are enormous (XL), and one slice was enough to fill each of us up, so we just ordered by the slice.

Saturday, we drove down to St. George's Island and had seafood at a beachside restaurant called the Blue Parrot, and then spent the rest of the day on a rather uncrowded stretch of beach in the state park down there. We all got rather burned, but we all enjoyed it thoroughly. We had a pretty hard time finding anything open for dinner after we got back, but at some really good barbeque at a place called Famous Dave's.

We left around noon on Sunday and went over to Jacksonville, under the impression that it would be an hour quicker that way (stupid GPS). We ended up getting into a heavy bit of traffic between the beach and Columbia, SC, and our 8 hour return trip turned into 10 hours. By the time we got home, I'd called our friend Richard to take Connor out again (he stayed at home by himself and was remarkably well behaved) and our neighbor who'd done most of the dog duty was actually at the house after taking Connor for another walk because she'd noticed we weren't home yet. It was a great trip, and we thoroughly enjoyed it (except for the traffic).

Before we left, I was between projects and had time to paint Lauren's closet, pictures of which are below. Not exactly my favorite color, but the room turned out nicely, and most importantly Lauren loves it.

Fortunately, toward the end of last week, I got a call from the company I'd worked for the last couple of months, and I will be starting a new project this afternoon, which hopefully will keep me going for a while, and maybe even lead to other projects to get rolled onto so I don't have a lot of downtime. Lauren's parents will be visiting us for her birthday next weekend, and I'm sure I'll have pictures from that in a couple of weeks.

June Update

I didn't really lie in the last post about not doing anything to the house in the next couple of months, plans just changed. So last week, Lauren and I decided that it might be a good time to try to replace the cracked tiles in our master bathroom (started with the smaller and less visible one so it would be easier and mistakes wouldn't be as obvious to visitors). Last Saturday, we stripped out the tile:Patched the holes in the tile, especially the part behind the door, which had been the main source of cracking in the tile:Removed the toilet, which we then stored in our shower: And finally removed the cracked marble threshhold:

Then once the floor had dried (which took several days because of the thickness of the mortar we had to add, even with our fan we bought for our mold/cabinet project on all day and night) we cut a piece of plastic sheeting in the shape of our floor and cut out a piece of vinyl from Home Depot in a slightly larger piece. We trimmed it once we had laid it in the bathroom, and then attached it to the floor with special tape made for that type of flooring. Then we added some baseboards/moulding and replaced the old, gross A/C vent:Then, we started to reinstall the toilet after I'd painstakingly cleaned it since it was taken apart for the first time in years. Turns out it had a crack, so we got another from Home Depot that was cheap and much smaller, which is a good thing because that bathroom is tiny. But, once we got it home we found out that the base was broken, so we had to take that back and get it replaced. When we installed it, we discovered that we needed to not only level it out with some shims, but because of the gap between the bottom of the toilet and the vinyl, we need to put wood under each side to stabilize the toilet as well. It is working great, so for now it appears we did it correctly:Then, we replaced the threshhold with a wooden one from Home Depot, which I had to cut to fit around the door frame, as well as prime and paint before installing:So we then celebrated by going to a concert last night. The concert was headlined by No Doubt, which is touring again after years of doing their own projects. Before them was a band called Paramore, and another band called The Sounds, which I'd never heard of but I've heard a song of theirs on a commercial. We had a lot of fun until the very end of the night when I started to get a major migraine from a combination of the lights shining in my eyes constantly and the incessant smoking of the people around us. It was at an outdoor venue, so there wasn't any way to prevent people from doing that, unfortunately. Here's us before my head starting killing me:We ended up leaving during a song, and thought we'd left early, but we got to hear the end of the song as we walked to our car, and then the show was over, so we beat the rush and we got to hear the entire concert, which was perfect timing.

As for work, the project that might have started several weeks ago ended up fizzling, which is ok because I got put on another project for the company I'd work with and been cut from the project, except this time I was brought in from the beginning and it was expanded, so I'm on the short list now and worked all last week, even though half the team was asked to stay home the last few days. The company is going to be expanding their presence here, and are actually looking to hire a few people on a permanent basis, so I'm going to do some asking about that. Two of my friends got hired by firms recently, too, so hopefully things are turning around.

Early May Update

Lauren and I haven't been able to do much work to the house the last few weeks because I was working on a project (which was then cut in half and I was on the losing end) and we were busy on weekends.



Last weekend, we went with our friend Richard and several other young adults to work build a shed on a property for Habitat for Humanity. Unfortunately, the economy is affecting them too, so their projects are limited to corporate projects and one house that is being worked on by ministers from a variety of denominations, including our own associate pastor. The shed was actually fairly easy to construct, and I think that we should be able to do one of our own as long as we have the money and manpower to get it finished.



This past weekend, we went on the youth beach retreat and served as counselors. It was a blast, but I got very sunburned and spent all of today in bed recovering. Our friend Kerry and I slept on couches in the living room of the rental house because of a lack of space in bedrooms, so our sleep was short and not really all that restful. However, we all had a lot of fun and a lot of the kids made new friends. The waves were pretty intense, the roughest I've ever seen. I ended up with a sizeable headache Saturday night because I spent the entire day in the water with ten foot waves pounding me in the head because they were breaking at random points in the water. Still, it was some of the best body-surfing I've ever seen and I can't wait to go back.



I still don't have a project to work on, but I'll be going around this week to law firms to see if they're hiring, plus a friend tipped me off to an upcoming project for an actual law firm in Charlotte starting soon, and hopefully I'll get staffed on that. I've heard that the job market is starting to turn around, but I think I'll probably have to wait in line behind the attorneys who were laid off in the last six months. At any rate, things are starting to look better and hopefully that will mean I get to start practicing soon.

MORE WORK!!

Ok, so I kinda lied about doing things around the house. Only now, they're going to be of an external nature, for the most part. The last of the inside stuff, for now, was painting my office, which is now a medium gray. I also have recently purchased a new chair for my room, which is in the first picture. Wednesday, when I came home, Lauren was out in the front yard and told me to come see what she'd done. When I rounded the corner of the house, I saw that she'd hacked up the bushes in the front of the house. All that was left were the trunks and the roots. So, I came home a little early from work yesterday and took out the remaining parts of three bushes, and then took out the last bush Saturday and also took out one of the large shrubs on the side of the house. Meanwhile, Lauren laid some plastic retaining wall and then planted some flowers, with topsoil put around them.

And then, because it would have looked odd to have a coiled up white cord in the flowerbed, we got a pot to put Connor's tether in the front yard. It is a "faux-distressed glaze" black pot (Lauren's words).

Our next project is going to be putting the other flowerbed in (the bushes are gone from there too) and putting some stepping stones down so we can put our trash can on the side of the house instead of behind it.

New House Pics

As promised, I'm posting pictures of the improvements to the house since the last pictures were posted. But first, I'm going to post better pictures of previous improvements. First, we painted the living room beige, with red accent walls opposite the window seat and inside of the window. We'll be adding crown moulding and some moulding around the accent wall to create sharper edge.

The guest room is a light green that is very soothing and looks much better in person than in pictures. We're using the closet doors as a headboard for the bed. Lauren also painted the inside of the closet a darker shade of green and we made some shelves to go in there to display her dolls from around the world.

I painted the master bedroom a light blue (not quite Carolina blue, but close). We're going to put some fabric behind the bed as a space-definer at some point.

I also painted the master bathroom the same beige as the living room and scraped all the junk off the tiles in the shower and on the floor. The room is so much better now that Lauren actually uses it!For several months (since before we moved) Lauren has had her eye on a certain counter-height table and chairs at Garden Ridge (a discount home decor superstore). I've been fighting it until recently because I didn't feel we needed a new table. We finally decided to get one last Friday that we'd seen at Ikea on our previous trip. We got it home and realized that it was too brown for the room (the accents are all black). We returned it on Saturday and went to Garden Ridge, where we found out the other table was on sale for almost 50% off! Lauren was so excited, she actually let me get a new glider/recliner/swivel chair and ottoman for my office/guy room. Even including that, we ended up saving over $200 by buying at Garden Ridge. The table looks great in the room, although we've only used it once or twice since we bought it.

My latest project was to touchup the black outside doors and then paint the door frames white, rather than the ugly brown/maroon color that they used to be. The all look much better, but the front door looks especially good. We're eventually going to get storm doors for all of the doors except that one, so I took particular care in redoing that one. This will probably be the last time for a while that home improvement pictures get posted, as I will be starting a new project on Monday, which is slated to last between a month and two months. The company intends to have a permanent, constant presence in Charlotte, which will hopefully mean I'll be consistently employed. That would mean a much slower home improvement process, but given where we are, we can afford to stop or slow down for a bit.